Does Religion Require Blind faith?
In the comment to a previous post (entitled: Is it “child abuse” for parents to teach their faith to their children?) a comment was made that is worthy of its own post.
Rodibidably said
All religion is based on blind faith, that is belief without evidence.
Let me say that I do not agree with his assessment. This type of broad based attack can’t be allowed to go unchallenged. Undoubtedly, there are some religions that might teach blind faith. I am sure that there are some Christians who are proponents and practitioners of blind faith. The real question is, though, is Christianity based on blind faith? I intend to limit my comments to Christianity.
Faith is defined as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” in Hebrews 11:1. It is a major theme of the whole Bible but nowhere in the Bible are we told to have blind faith. We are told that faith is a gift from God. Ephesians 2:8-9 says “(8) For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, (9) not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” We are told that without faith it is impossible to please God. Hebrews 11:6 says “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” We are told that faith must be accompanied by works. James 2:17-18 says “(17) So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (18) But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” And we are told much, much, much more about faith.
Rodibidably defines faith as “belief without evidence”. This is not a biblical definition of faith. Nowhere that I know of in the Bible is faith defined or portrayed in this way. If I am wrong, I ask for someone to please correct me on this point. The Bible tells us that the evidence for our faith is all around us and that we have no excuse before God for not acknowledging it. Romans 1:18-21 says “(18) For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (19) For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. (20) For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (21) For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” Let me reiterate that…..we are without excuse because the evidence for God is all around us.
How can our faith be a blind faith if the evidence is all around us? There are only two possibilities. If we truly have a blind faith then our faith is false or it is in a false god. Can you think of any other possibilities? So the next time you here someone talking about blind faith you can be sure that they don’t understand the nature of true faith or that they are not Christians. Maybe both.
religion is for the weak of mind
If you are going to make such a stupid blanket attack on people who are religious at least have the courage to put your name and blog to your comment.
Also, if you insist on making this statement then you must provide the evidence to prove your assertion. Until you do your comment is simply your opinion…..your WRONG opinion.
Rodibidably,
First, Genesis 22 contains gives us the account of when Abraham was tested by God and told to sacrifice his son Isaac (I actually taught from this chapter approximately 6 weeks ago, give or take a week or two). We are told in verse 1 that God was testing Abraham. God tests us to draw us closer to Himself. So we know right from the start that what God’s general purpose was. We see in verse 5 what kind of faith Abraham had…..it is very strong. Verse 5 says “Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.” Abraham was certain that one way or another that he and Isaac were going to return. How can this be? Abraham remembered the promises God had made to him. It did not matter whether God was going to provide another sacrifice (which He did) or raised Isaac from the dead, either way God was going to fulfill His promises to Abraham. Later in the chapter (in verses 15-18) God confirms His purpose for the test. He was testing Abraham’s obedience. God wanted Abraham to know just how far he was willing to go to obey God. God already knew how far Abraham would go….He was not waiting to see what Abraham’s decision would be. He was never afraid that Abraham might fail. You must be careful not to come to that conclusion because it is a false conclusion. No, God knew exactly what Abraham would do…but He wanted Abraham to know also.
Having eliminated the Abraham reference from the “blind faith” question, I now will return to Thomas. Let’s first get an understanding of the circumstances that led to Thomas’ declaration that he would not believe with proof. Thomas had been with Jesus for 3+ years. He had been taught directly by Jesus, he had witnessed Jesus teaching others, he had seen the miracles Jesus did, he had seen Jesus arrested, tried, beaten, bloodied, bruised, crucified, and buried. Today, we would say how can anyone who saw all this first hand have any doubts as to who and what Jesus was. But in reality, barring God giving us discernment we would have reacted in much the same way Thomas did.
The story of Thomas is in John 20:24-29. It says “(24) Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. (25) So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” (26) Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” (27) Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” (28) Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” (29) Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
We see in verse 25 that Thomas declares that he will never believe unless he has physical proof. Meaning until he can see the risen Lord with his wounds from being crucified. This shows that he had NO faith, not blind faith. That is the point of the passage…..Thomas had no faith before Jesus appeared to him in His resurrected body. His faith came from his ability to see the resurrected Jesus. In verse 29, Jesus points out that those who have not seen the resurrected Jesus and yet have believed are blessed. This passage in no way indicates that there is no evidence or that people are required to believe without evidence.
Rodibidably said
I do not mean to be rude but this statement is simply ridiculous. If it is true (and I don’t think it is) then it shows the sad state of christian education in our churches. If this “vast majority” of “christians” actually believe that God requires blind faith then, at best, they have been misled and, at worst, they may not be Christians at all.
Billy over at thegreengospel recently posted on faith and he also touched on blind faith. Click here to read it.
Hi
Blind faith, in my opinion, is no faith. A blind man does not see, so he may fall into any ditch in the way. One should be research minded and should base his faith on certainties in stead of doubts,myths and mysteries.
I respect your religion; but I have my own free opinion. I think it to be too cruel for a father (God) to sacrifice/kill his beloved one (son) for others imaginary sins.
The truth, in my opinion, is that Jesus was not God; he never proclaimed as such, there are no direct quotes from him in this regards. God talked with Jesus and revealed His word on him, He chose Jesus his Messenger/Prophet/Messiah, Jesus was not a son of God.
Jews did not believe that Jesus was a true Moshiach or Prophet of God and to prove that they tried to kill him by putting him on cross, Jesus became unconscious due to the injuries inflicted on him. He was delivered from cross alive and placed in a room like tomb where he was treated for the injuries.
This was done secretly lest the Jews again torture him. Afterwards, he went to spread the gospel to the remaining ten tribes of the House of Israel, he died a natural death later at some point in the history. This is all truth in my opinion.
Kindly visit my blogsite for any peaceful comments and or peaceful discussion on interesting posts/pages there. You are welcome for your differing opinion/thoughts if you so like.
Thanks
I am an Ahmadi peaceful Muslim
Hello,
Sorry for not posting a link to my blog, I’m not trying to avoid further discussion, I just don’t have a blog and just happend to stumble across this one.
I’ve got a couple of comments I want to make. I am a Christian but I’m just trying to look deeper into some stuff to find answers. So here are my questions/comments.
Romans 1:18-21 – From these verses it seems to be saying that a simple look at our natural world will point to a creator. I would agree to this completely. What I don’t understand is how this points to the Christian/Jewish God. Nature points to intelligent design but I don’t see how it points to a specific God. How then can we be blamed for not knowing which God is truth based solely on this point.
Secondly in Genesis 22 you state that God knew all along that Abraham would pass this test. Yet in verse 12 God says “for now I know” which suggests he didn’t know before. Where does the idea come from that He knew from the get go?
The verses you gave for the Thomas argument found in John also doesn’t seem to make sense. You say that verse 29 is not saying we don’t need evidence, it is just saying we don’t need first hand seeing evidence. I disagree with this statement simply because you have provided no further proof. Your argument suggests that just because Thomas needed evidence so must everyone else.
Ryan,
You have hit on a good point. How can we know which god is the true God? Lets consider things logically. For this I will mention the Law of Causality (or the Law of Cause and Effect). Basically it says that for every effect there is a cause. Theoretically, you could examine every effect and find its cause. That cause would be the effect of another cause. You could eventually trace things back to the original cause and effect. When you got to the first cause you would realize that it did not have a cause. It has to be an un-caused first cause. It would have to be self sufficient and self sustaining. It would be the creator of all things.
Now that we have established that there is only ONE cause, we have to see if we can determine what it is. As Christians, we believe that this First Cause is God. In our search for God we can eliminate all religions that believe in more than one god. Then we can start comparing the claims of the remaining religions to see if they are valid or not. Through this process, we will find that only one proves true. That is the God of the Universe…the One True God, the Christian God.
In Genesis 22, God was testing Abraham. God knew how Abraham would respond. If He did not know then He is not God. God knows all things and all possible things. One of His attributes is all-knowing or Omniscient. Any interpretation of a particular passage that is in conflict with one of God’s self stated attributes must be wrong. Therefore, you need to find the correct interpretation. That was the basis on which I made my statements.
I think you have misunderstood my comments. I am not saying that we don’t need evidence. God does not expect us to obey blindly. We are to search for the evidence He has given us. The Thomas story in John 20 is in reference to his lack of faith. He would not believe that Jesus had been resurrected unless He saw Him personally. Thomas was typical of many non-believers today….they say things like they “will not believe that God exists unless God appears to them”. Thomas had the ability to know Jesus personally and see Him after His resurrection. We don’t have that opportunity, therefore we must have faith. Faith that is given to us by God.
I hope this has helped clarify my previous statements. Thanks for visiting my blog and come back and leave comments any time.
I don’t like your main point about the Bible being a source of true “faith”. It doesn’t make any sense. Blind faith can be defined by writing from thousands of years ago. Your point that God shows himself to us and allows us to have true “faith” in him also makes no sense, at least from my life so far. I was born into a christian home. Don’t you think if God showed himself to me in enough of a way for me to have true “faith” in him, that I would have trusted him? It makes no sense to say that it isn’t just blind faith. The only thing you have in life to say that your God is real and that your God is the creator of the Universe is the Bible. Furthermore, to believe in the Christian God means you are ignoring much of known science today; this means that you trust a 2,000 year-old book more than you trust the smartest people in today’s world, which is obviously nonsense. Hopefully, you will be able to reply back to this because I’m not really sure how long ago all this conversation happened. Haha… Oh well, I’m not saying Christianity isn’t a good thing to believe in, seeing that it has some very good and important values and lessons to life, but you can learn from these lessons without believeing that it wasn’t just some very smart humans from 3,000 years ago that are saving you right now. This topic always interests me, so please respond ;D
Chris,
You said:
Faith comes from a knowledge of truth. That makes perfect sense. There is only one source of truth and that is God. He IS truth. His word IS truth. Blind faith has nothing to do with truth.
You said
Being born into a Christian home is not the same thing as being regenerated. Simply seeing or knowing Christians is not enough by itself to bring someone to the point of salvation. The only thing that bring us to salvation is being regenerated by the Holy Spirit. God does that only to those He chooses. If He has brought you to salvation yet, I pray that He will.
You said
What I think is nonsense is to trust in our flawed knowledge. Science is doing the best it can but we find every day that something we thought we knew for sure was wrong. So I propose this to you, why not believe in the One who created all things (including science). Would it not make more sense than to turn to the One with the answers when we have questions. God, as creator, has full knowledge of all He created.
I will be happy to continue this discussion with you. Ask your questions and I will try to answer them.